


Opportunity Knocks

by Arowen12



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Carlos in the Desert Otherworld, Cecil Uses a Cane, Inhuman Carlos, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part B, Spoilers, Trans Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), becoming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arowen12/pseuds/Arowen12
Summary: “I’ve looked Cecil, there are no doors here. Which just means – it just means that I’ll find another way how’s that saying go when opportunity knocks open the door and thank opportunity with a kiss and when opportunity doesn’t knock phone it angrily and complain and then order wood from the store and build a door. There’s a door in my mind Cecil. I – I don’t know if I should open it or what it means. Cecil, there’s a door in my mind."
Relationships: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! I'm here with my first WTNV fic in 2021 of all years, but well the pandemic has been good for podcasts. I'm not quite finished Night Vale (currently episode 100) so I don't know all the spoilers but fair warning for anything up to that point which might slip in. Read on and enjoy!

The phone call ends with a beep and Cecil’s voice dies away suddenly and yet seems to linger on the quickly chilling air for a long time. Carlos stands in the desert; the wind is beginning to pick up as the sun slants unevenly towards the horizon turning the desert from the harsh red of day into the chilling blue of night, and Carlos is quite suddenly alone.

Objectively, he knows that the group of warriors are somewhere in the sands likely setting up an encampment or perhaps they had an encampment before they went through the doors and Carlos will have to seek them out tomorrow and ask. And of course there might be other life forms here, not birds, he hasn’t seen any, but perhaps something microscopic. But then, he didn’t bring his microscope with him which isn’t helpful.

But well, the point being that he is alone and a desert gets cold at night. He glances around him, the desert seems to stretch on and on with craggily bushes jutting out from thick outcroppings of rock and in the distance the light house blinking on, off, and on.

He digs through his pockets idly cataloguing the items, lighter, pocket knife, PH strip, a handful of what is probably sand, and a sample bottle which is basically a plastic water bottle with the label pulled off. He’s got his lab coat and a flannel on underneath it so he’ll be somewhat protected from the elements. He wasn’t planning on staying. Really the first few days while Strexcorp took over was more than enough to satisfy the instant scientific curiosity and more than that would need equipment. One can only glance at the rock samples so many times before deducing that they all look like rocks.

Carlos thinks a part of him knew. Knew that he wouldn’t come back maybe it was when he was walking beside Dana, or holding up the basically an umbrella, or watching as the others stepped back into Night Vale and his chest wound tighter and tighter like that time, he got caught on the street during a traffic jam; cars should not make jam.

But knowing doesn’t mean he’s coping with or prepared to what, just up and leave his whole life behind again? This isn’t like coming to Night Vale, running from an absence of having something to run to, he has Cecil, his assistants, old woman Josie, and all the other members of the town. He had thought he had been a part of the town, that a part of him, maybe it was tiny like a sprout and needed a bit more nourishment, was just starting to grow in the desert soil that is Night Vale. He guesses not, maybe he only loves Cecil and that wasn’t enough for the town. But that’s also not true, he loves Night Vale, it’s a sort of love-hate relationship and there are days where he thinks longingly of home where the government isn’t quite so overt about everything and then he thinks about leaving Night Vale and it’s like he’s been hit by one of the Glow Cloud’s offerings.

This is just liked that one episode of Doctor Who he thinks half deliriously but at least Rose had a Doctor. He doesn’t even have Cecil’s voice, there’s no radio here and he has one voicemessage on his phone.

He shivers suddenly, a whole-body motion and he realises his teeth are starting to clack together and he’s been standing in the same spot for the past however long his internal monologue has been going on for. The sun is just a sliver on the blue silver sky and he resolutely doesn’t turn where the golden light of the Smiling God is cold and bright.

Right, he’s got to keep moving, can’t freeze to death on his first night out in the desert, his mom would be terribly disappointed. He thinks of her face, her voice when he told her he was going to Night Vale, can picture the slow puzzlement, maybe she never connects the name to the location. She had never liked deserts.

He’s getting distracted again and it’s easier to follow the random paths of his thoughts than try to think about what all this means. Dana was able to survive for over a year, likely with limited resources, which means he can do this. Of course, he can. Right, just compartmentalize, put everything else away to deal with later. Idly, he thinks that box is getting pretty full, well he’ll have plenty of time to decompartmentalize in the future he supposes.

Carlos makes his way to the first shrubby bush he sees and starts tugging on the branches, sawing them off with his pocket knife and cursing at the way the joints of his fingers have already gone stiff with the cold. He deprives three more bushes of their branches before he settles into an outcropping of rocks, they’re large enough to keep out the worst of the wind and will help keep the warmth in, if he could get some kind of tarp that would probably help.

Tomorrow, that’s a tomorrow problem like looking for the doors and searching out the army. He tries to recall vague images of how to start a fire and when that doesn’t work, he thinks about combustion and tries his best. It’s a pitiful fire, more kindling than actual logs, but it’s warm and casts dancing shadows across the rock face. Carlos curls tight into a ball close to the fire and thinks about mathematical equations until his brain settles into a pleasant buzz, just watching the fire.

He adds a few sticks to the fire before he lays down his lab coat, already covered with dust, draped like a blanket over his body. His dreams are shadowy, the rattle of a subway car, a bright glowing light, something scurrying across his body, the slow blink of an eye, and in his mind a door. He can picture it still, wispy around the edges when he closes his eyes, but there.

He wakes early in the morning, his body shivering and frost tickling the tips of his eyelashes, he can barely feel his toes. He lights the fire again and tries to fall asleep, but can’t the pinch of his toes warming and the frost melting to join the tears on his cheeks as he stares at the fire.

Carlos allows himself an hour to wallow, he almost feels guilty about it, in university he allowed himself fifteen-minute intervals interspersed with formal recitations, but well extenuating circumstances. The sun is beginning to rise and here it doesn’t scream, it just seems to slump upwards like a stuffed animal pulled behind a kid by a string, the whole sky seems golden with the sunrise and the Smiling God, as if they’re competing with each other.

And that’s enough musing, thinking things like that just tempts fate and he really doesn’t want to be there when two cosmic entities fight each other. He pulls on his jacket and clears the remains of the fire away as best as he can.

Right, first order of business, looking for the doors and hoping to find the army somewhere along the way. He moves slowly trying to conserve as much energy as possible as he recalls what Dana told him in between moments of gasping panic and his brain firing so fast his mouth couldn’t catch up with it all. There’s a river to the, well, he supposes whatever direction the sun is in. That’s the direction Dana said she originally came from, the light house, assuming the sun still rises in the east, is roughly north then.

He heads in the direction of the river his eyes scraping across the sands for a door. But there are no doors. The desert is flat except for the rough outcroppings of rocks and he can see out for miles. And he sees no doors.

When he was trapped, there were doors everywhere, okay statistically they were not everywhere they were spaced out at about roughly one door for every 15 miles. They tended to just stand out in the open seeming to lead to nowhere.

He hears the river before he sees it, a distant gurgling noise, not like the actual sound of a river, but like someone gurgling water at the back of their throat. The river is not so much a river as a small pond with dubious looking water and a few reeds poking half dead out of the sand and he wonders if the water has any small life forms. Carlos crouches and ruffles through his pocket and pulls out a PH strip and dips it into the water.

Seven, so it’s neutral and probably water. He breaks off a piece of a nearby reed and pushes it into the water. It bobs with a slight eddy of the breeze, so far so good. Right time to test the hypothesis, he sticks his finger in the water, it feels like water. Thoughts of just dying in the desert and Cecil never knowing that he’s dead thinking that Carlos will come back to him hover at the front of his mind.

He shoves his finger in his mouth, his chemistry prof would probably kill him, but well it tastes like water and he’s not thinking about dying so that’s good. He fills his sample jar with water, and glances roughly at where the sun is hovering in the sky and then to the lighthouse.

Okay, right, time to keep looking. He tells himself that a few times but doesn’t quite move from the bank of the pond, he wonders if there’s an underground water source, maybe a source from Night Vale? One that feeds the Whispering Forest? He hasn’t felt any hunger now that he thinks of it, just the sticky feeling of sweat drying tacky with sand and a thirst that comes more from morning breath than from physical exertion.

Does that mean his bodily functions are still working? He checks his pulse, it stills exists. It could mean he’s in a sort of temporary stasis, or that in the desert he’s consuming energy through photosynthesis.

The sun has crept high into the sky and Carlos gives up on continuing until the sun isn’t at its zenith. He tucks himself into one of the rocky outcroppings near the pond and pulls out his phone, still at 97% and pulls up the voicemail, pressing one.

Cecil’s voice purrs from the speakers, “Hey Carlos I’m sure you’re busy doing science but I just thought I’d call, can you pick up eggs from the store? And oh! If they have those cute little pastries, you know the ones that are shaped like inverse croissants? They are divine. Anyways, I’ll leave you to your science and you can tell me all about what’s unexplainable today. Love you!”

He wipes away at the tears on his cheeks, his eyes are burning and this is a stupid waste of water but he sniffles and doesn’t care. It’s only been a day; but it’s been more than that, it’s been stressful months where Cecil comes home sobbing and shaking with anger unable to do _anything_ , and then it’s Carlos trapped behind a door and Night Vale is never normal but he misses his boyfriend.

Carlos pulls himself together eventually, compartmentalize he repeats to himself; he wonders if his medication is also in stasis, does his body produce new chemicals? Because he can be a mess without them and right now, he can’t afford that, can’t afford going cold suddenly.

Compartmentalize, he repeats it like a mantra as he downs the water, for science, and refills it before continuing on. Dana seemed to think the desert went on forever but Carlos is certain he can find the pond again if necessary, it’s all a matter of walking in the right direction.

He walks for, by his estimate considering time is wack, roughly two hours without sight of any doors when he stumbles on the warriors’ camp. A small sea of tents forms a circle and spill out beyond it, maybe thirty tents; he remembers Dana talking about different sections. He can see the warriors, their masks glint like polished stone in the glow of the light from the Blind God. He stands on the outside of the camp for a moment before he inhales and walks forward as if he’s walking through Night Vale in the midst of yet another crisis.

A few of the warriors stare but no one steps forward until he reaches the center. A person, likely a man, though he is over ten feet tall, steps forward and offers a hand, “Doug.”

“Carlos,” He responds and tries for a smile though it probably looks pained.

They stare at each other in awkward silence, Carlos wonders where they got the pigment for their masks when Doug says hesitantly, “Dana stayed with us while she was trapped here,” he pauses on the word trapped, there’s a wordless acknowledgment that the balance of the world is wrong, Carlos isn’t supposed to be here, before Doug continues, “If you’d like you may stay with us, we are nomadic and travel often.”

Carlos’ mind runs in circles for a moment before he shakes his head and summons the manners his mom drilled into his head, “No, thank you, I appreciate the offer, truly. But I – I think I need to be on my own for now. If you have any extra supplies though I would appreciate it.”

Doug nods, the tight line of his shoulders slumping slightly with what might be relief, he nods to one of the others who runs off before he says to Carlos, “We return twice to this spot in what Dana said was by your time a week,” Carlos nods, “You are welcome in our camp whenever you need Scientist.”

“Thank you,” Carlos pauses, inhales and asks, “Have you seen any more doors?”

A mask can’t frown but Carlos gets the sense that he is behind the mask as he shakes his head, “There are no doors.”

It is a statement filled with finality.

Carlos nods, inhales and exhales, compartmentalize he thinks to himself as another masked warrior appears and in a feminine voice says, “We had an extra tent and a few other things that might be of help Scientist.”

She offers it to him in a bag which might be made of canvas or an animal skin, he takes it with a watery smile, “Thanks.”

Doug pauses watching him and something changes slightly, a little bit of hostility slips away or maybe he just makes a pitiful sight because Doug says, “Stay tonight, Greg is making stew.”

The woman, her mask pale grey with spots and whorls of blue nods enthusiastically, “It’s great stew.”

“I – okay,” Carlos says and the woman smiles extending her hand.

“Alicia,” he takes it with a smile, his hand like a child’s in hers, and she continues, “Come on I’ll show you how to pitch the tents.”

He follows her through the camp and she’s friendly and waves to the other warriors explaining in a soft voice that they often war with neighbouring armies, but they are always safe near the light house, that they get food from gardens they plant and tend as they cross the desert, and there is prey to hunt. She doesn’t specify the animals and he doesn’t push.

Alice helps him pitch the tent, laughs and says, “You need more muscle on you,” he protests because he’s been doing a lot of running for his life recently but also doesn’t say that he should probably eat more and hunching over a desk for up to ten hours is also probably bad for his health. Her eyes are knowing regardless.

The tent is quite large, giant-sized he supposes, long enough for him to lie on the rough cot made of reeds and strips of leather, with space for another cot, and its cool out of the sun. He spends the rest of the afternoon drowsing and letting his thoughts circle firmly around the knowledge that there are no doors.

He’ll just have to make one then. That should be easy right? He took a wood shop class once in high school, granted he only made a bird house, and there isn’t really any wood in the desert. But Carlos will find a way back to Cecil, no matter what.

Alicia comes and gets him for dinner, in the centre of the camp where masks tilt up to reveal mouths and the soup comes in bowls, huge in his hands, made of a red stained clay. The stew itself is thick with vegetables which look like tubers and what might be cacti, also a meat that is of questionable sources (what’s the harm in a little cannibalism) but tastes great.

The lull of chatter fills the air as he sits beside Alicia, talk about the best battle formations, tales of someone’s brother who totally got caught with someone else’s sister. It’s nice and it makes him ache for Night Vale like the time his heart went missing.

Afterwards, a few of them step forward with instruments that Carlos has never seen before, and he was friends once with a music major. There’s a pause, a sort of gathering, distantly the rumble of the Smiling God, but that’s all it is, distant, and then the music begins.

It croons and tinkles like water rushing and thundering and raining. Voices join in and the song must be familiar because they are loud and confident and they pipe up from all around him, all corners of the camp, a few warriors rise and start dancing and Carlos feels it like a laugh in his throat as he watches.

Later he stares at the rough fire in the pit Alicia helped him dig for the fire, the sand cradled around it like a volcano, the fire inside the lava. He presses the call button and holds it to his ear, waiting as the dial tone rings.

And rings.

And, “Carlos? Is that you Carlos?

“Cecil,” He says the name like a sigh, like a first breath after coming up from under the water and feeling the sun on your skin.

“Carlos,” and it’s the same tone, the same softness, then, “It’s been a week is everything okay?”

He frowns, that confirms his theory that time isn’t _connected_ , he wonders if the time here is more right than the time in Night Vale. He exhales, shakes his head and says, “It’s only been two days for me Cecil.”

“Oh hmmm.”

“What time is it for you?” Carlos asks rubs his fingers at a stain in his lab coat he just knows is not going to come out, ever.

“I’m in the middle of a show,” Cecil says and before Carlos can apologise, he continues, “It’s fine, I was so worried I hadn’t heard from you and I couldn’t help but think that something had happened. Are you safe? Are you okay?”

“I’m – okay, I’m with the masked army right now and uh you know doing lots of science,” Carlos exhales, scrubs a hand through his hair, “I’m sorry for interrupting you during the show. Are you okay?”

“Station Management can suck it for all I care if they think the add sponsor goes on for too long, I want to talk to you,” a pause, “I’m doing well, happy to be back at the radio station! The angels, who do not exist, bought Strexcorp and are using the money to build and opera house, how exciting! Oh, I’m getting waved at by an intern would you like to be on the show Carlos? I can always call you back after.”

“That’s great, and sure Cecil I’d love to,” Carlos responds and doesn’t mention that he doesn’t want to stop talking to Cecil. Then Cecil is talking in his radio host asking Carlos about the doors and the desert and what is he supposed to tell Cecil? That there are no doors? That he doesn’t know how he’s going to get home.

He lies says he’s still searching for the doors, a temporary lie, something to soften the blow, that’s what he tells himself as he talks about the interesting composition of the rocks (and it is interesting, many of them have a crystalline structure and he’s not a geologist but he knows that is strange), and he laughs and makes it sound as if he’s having a great time and not one slip up away from having a break down.

The call ends and Carlos clutches the phone to his chest his fingers hovering over the call button, he wants Cecil, wants him to hold him, to run his fingers through Carlos hair. He wants to be home, his apartment over the lab, cramped and with furniture that smells faintly of apple cider vinegar, or Cecil’s place with its sometimes-invisible furniture and the lingering cling of incense.

He blinks back a while later and thinks he might be disassociating a little bit, the sun has sunken below the horizon leaving only the Smiling God and the gold of its light is sick corruption, it is gold glinting greedily, it is smiles stretching ceaselessly. It is the grey-dark of night cast with a green-yellow edge and Carlos is cold as he tucks his coat tighter around his shoulders and presses the call button holding it to his ear.

It rings. Once. Twice. Then, “Hi, you have reached the voicemail of Cecil Gershwin Palmer, I am definitely not crying over my boyfriend right now but I am likely at the radio station, leave a message at the beep.” Followed by said beep.

“Hey Cecil,” he says and the words block up his throat, he laughs and says, “You probably shouldn’t listen to this, but I know you’re going to anyway… maybe wait till I call you again. I just miss you much, I never thought I could miss something this much. I’m a complete being, or as complete as a human can being when we often suffer from deficits of chemicals we need to function, but being without you is like missing those chemicals, that sounds bad,” he laughs barely a huff to hide the tears, “Cecil I wish I could tell you that I know what to do, that science has an answer. But right now, I don’t know what to do, this place is interesting but I’ve already observed the rocks, I even licked one it was kind of sweet, like a mint, but the point is I don’t have my equipment and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do and – and there are no doors.

“I’ve looked Cecil, not everywhere, not yet but I don’t have to, not to know that there are no doors here. Which just means – it just means that I’ll find another way. How’s that saying go when opportunity knocks open the door and thank opportunity with a kiss and when opportunity doesn’t knock phone it angrily and complain and then order wood from the store and build a door,” he pauses his breath sounds ragged even to his own ears, quieter he says, “There’s a door in my mind Cecil. I – I don’t know if I should open it, what it means. Cecil there’s a door in my mind. Anyways, sorry to bother you, you’re probably asleep I just miss you so much, I love you.”

A click and the phone call is over and he feels as if there’s a literal weight off his chest, oh there is he can see it indenting the sand, metaphors jeez. But whether Cecil listens to the voicemail when he wakes and calls Carlos back or if he does later or never is out of Carlos hands but it’s a choice he made, a choice he gave to Cecil and that makes it better.

He turns adding a few twigs to the fire and wonders if he could make something that burns for longer, he watches the fire for a long moment before his eyes slide shut. The world sparks with colours, patterns and circles of white like the moon and then his conscious slips past all of that.

He dreams of a subway car rattling along the tracks and a woman stands at the end of the car staring at him from behind a deer mask. The car rounds a corner and Carlos slams through a door and then he is standing in what those pictures of the sun up close always looked like and it doesn’t burn, just stretches and stretches with the bitter taste of iron. There’s a door in front of him and he’s running towards it a dog barking somewhere in the distance behind him, closer, closer, his hand latches around the handle and he throws it open. And, with a blink he falls deeper into sleep, the dreams drifting and scattering like very illegal clouds.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've listened to episodes 109 and 110 and they were certainly very existential inducing. I've adjusted the storyline slightly to fit that but otherwise, it already fit pretty well. Read on and enjoy!

Carlos wakes the next morning with the taste of sand on his tongue and the dreams wrapped around him like a child with a favourite blanket. Alicia comes and gets him for breakfast, fried cacti with a paste made of seeds of one of the plants the desert can support. It’s warm, greasy, and comforting in the best sort of way and Alicia watches him eat with a fond sort of expression to her mask.

After she drags him to where the warriors have set up a rough training area, fenced off with a few reeds and cleared of any debris. Carlos stares blankly at her for a long moment, the light of the Smiling God, casts the white of her mask into sharp contrast as she says, “Have to put some muscle on those arms of yours.”

Carlos glances at said arms hidden beneath his lab coat with an indignant expression. He lets himself get dragged and summarily beaten, but by the end of the hour soaked in sweat his hair plastered to his forehead he was able to stand against Alicia for more than five minutes so he’s calling that a win. He wonders how Cecil would have done with his scout training, Carlos has seen him do everything from light fires, a typical scout skill, to parkour, not a typical skill as far as he’s aware.

Afterwards, Alicia leads him to a tent, inside and out of the heat of the sun, Doug sits, towering over Carlos even at that height. He smiles at Carlos and welcomes him to a quick lunch as the sun outside bakes the sand into a reddish-brown. There’s drinks a cool tea made of cacti and something in the mint family. They talk for a long time, about Night Vale, about the warriors, their lives, their occupations, and it’s honestly nice and pretty normal.

As the sun starts to slink away from the height of the sky, Doug shares a glance with Alicia, it’s familiar and it sets off that ache again somewhere in Carlos’ chest, the one that had become Cecil-shaped before he had even noticed. Doug says, “We’re moving camp tonight, you are welcome to join us, Scientist.”

Carlos opens his mouth to protest, scientists are self-reliant after all, but he pauses considering it for a long moment. Alicia must see some of the hesitation on his face because she adds, “We will be returning to this area in a week, it is not far from the lighthouse.”

There may not be much science in the rocks, not without the right equipment, and Carlos was never overly interested in anthropology, but this is still a chance to search for the doors, to learn more about the masked warriors, how the desert functions. He nods once and then adds stumbling, “I – thank you, I would be honoured to travel with you all.”

“It just means you can spar with me more,” Alicia grins reaching out to ruffle his hair, her hand nearly dwarfs his head but the contact is nice, she adds, “We’ll put some muscle on you yet.”

He retreats to his tent afterwards, walking slowly through the camp, observing the few children running about, already taller than him. The adults talking and laughing with each other, training in the distance, the strange mounts which stand at the edge of camp and remind Carlos faintly of the pictures he’s seen of a camel.

It's cool in the tent and he strips off his lab coat, dabbing water from his sample container onto his forehead before settling on the ground. He itches for a pen, he had a few at the lab comically disguised, and a notebook, not to mention a microscope. He settles for the note’s app on his phone, jotting down a few quick theories, something briefly about the water content and the position of the stars relative to Night Vale.

Then he flicks through the photos on his phone, most of them are of things around Night Vale, and consequently quite corrupted, cameras don’t like angels. But there are photos of Cecil, cheering at one of Janice’s games, behind the desk at the station, his hands in the middle of an exuberant gesture. There are photos of a home he sometimes feels like he barely remembers.

Dinner is a quieter affair than the night before, one of the giants, with an unadorned mask sits and begins to speak. Their voice spills out, over, and through the listeners, similar to Cecil’s broadcasts. It’s a story of how the masked warriors came to be, life created from the sands when the blood of the gods spilt in a battle. The masks which hide their souls from the gods who seek to reclaim them once more.

Carlos feels drowsy and yet wide awake as he listens to the voice of the storyteller crooning through the air, the glow of a fire flickering and sending smoke to the stars above. There are more here than in Night Vale, where it’s mostly void and partially star. Here, they seem to collect, clumped together like fireflies at night.

After, the camp disperses to pack up, Carlos is proud of himself for only struggling with the tent for fifteen minutes, interspersed with a period of him lying with his face pressed into the cold sand, but he did it. Alicia finds him, the canvas bag slung over his shoulder and his lab coat tucked tight to his body, what he wouldn’t give for one of Cecil’s pairs of furry pants.

The mounts move with lumbering strides, a quick sort of sway and they set out under the moonless skies in the opposite direction of the Smiling God. Carlos, tucked in front of Alicia falls asleep in between one sway and the next.

The subway car rattles beneath his feet, the rails send up sparks that he can’t see and there are no doors even here. At the other end of the subway car there is a woman with a deer mask on her head. The shadows seem to pool around her and yet draw back, fleeing. She is studying Carlos, like a specimen under a microscope and he’s not sure how he knows but he can feel it. A sort of primordial fear tucked up at the back of his mind screaming at him to run but he is frozen as the subway car slams around a bend sending up sparks.

The light from the sparks illuminates the bugs crawling across the floor of the car, beetles, spiders, cockroaches, they clamber over the lumpy patterned cushions of the chair with a near inaudible chitter. A word – no a name whispers into Carlos’ mind, _Huntokar._

_The destroyer, the destroyer, the destroyer_.

A chittering, whispering, wave.

The subway car rounds the bend with a great tearing crash and Carlos jolts awake gasping for breath. He is terrified, his heart beating like a rabbit’s inside his chest and he briefly wonders if there’s been a scheduled heart surgery he’s missed again.

A hand, larger than his head settles on his shoulder and Alicia’s voice drifts from under the cover of night, “Are you okay, Scientist?”

Carlos catches his breath, thinks of Cecil talking him down, in, out, in, and it’s not as good as the real thing, but it works. He scrabbles for his sample container – now a water bottle let’s call things by what they are, and after taking a sip nods, “A bad dream, just a bad dream,” he sounds like he’s convincing himself.

Alicia nods her hand still resting on his shoulder grounding him in the moment and the bitter cold of night in the desert. They arrive an hour later at the new campsite, tucked beside a gurgling, literally, stream with a few trees clustered together, they’re green but with puffs of yellow which fill the air with a sweet scent. They disembark setting up tents in the same formation as before and Carlos does the same half-asleep. He collapses on his cot staring at the ceiling of the tent, the small flap for the smoke from a fire, he wonders if Cecil is thinking of him whenever he is.

His sleep is dreamless but he wakes uneasy, the sensation of a door in his mind stronger. He can picture it there when he closes his eyes, knows it’s in reach, all he would have to do is stretch out, wrap his fingers around the doorknob and push. There’s knowledge behind that door, great and terrible, but he’s a scientist and he can’t stop to ask why he shouldn’t open the door, why he shouldn’t see what’s behind the door.

But he hesitates, hand on the doorknob and thinks of the subway car, of Huntokar studying him with an impassive expression and he blinks and opens his eyes. Carlos pushes the door out of his mind, or tries to and falls into the rhythm of the camp.

In the morning Alicia drags him to training regardless of how much he complains about bruises from the day before, on one day she drags him afterwards to the tent of the camp medic who shows Carlos’ how to bind a wound and makes use of his much smaller hands to deal with tiny injuries and in return she shows him how to make a bruise paste. He helps out in what ways he can around the camp, but he is small and what takes him hours of manual labour takes a masked warrior half of an hour. So, he helps in other ways, using what science he can to make their lives easier; distilling water, star charts, and what detailed work his hands can take up.

There are hunting parties which bring back the giant carcasses of what looks like a distant relation of a lizard. Sometimes there are skirmishes with the different groups of warriors and Carlos huddles in his tent, his hands clenched white-knuckled around his pocket knife as he peaks out to watch the battle, more a dust cloud than anything visible. After, he helps bind wounds, pulls out splinters of a wood-like substance, and applies bruise paste.

They move roughly every two nights, though sometimes more or less frequently, often they travel at night but sometimes early in the morning. There are patches of fertile soil, by rivers with red clay, or in the shade of a grove of trees, which are harvested and tended to with a careful hand. Carlos catches sight of the patches, tubers, and other hardy root-like vegetables and cactus cuttings that are carefully cultivated.

It would be an anthropologist’s paradise, Carlos thinks, as he carefully tests the PH of the soil with his other strip and wishes again for a microscope, there’s probably microscopic life in the water. He creates star charts and thinks of Night Vale with an ache in his chest because while logic ceased to function there and conclusions were damn near impossible most things were still observable.

The Smiling God glows in the distance, a sort of lingering presence that if Carlos stares at too long tightens his throat and leaves him shuddering. Sometimes great rumbles fill the air like a thunderstorm on a cloudless day. The ground shifts, he wishes he had a seismograph, and sometimes the very rocks split apart. But the Smiling God stays away and Carlos knows they’ve only delayed it but it will have to be enough.

He calls Cecil, the time between the desert and Night Vale is off, sometimes day is night, and sometimes a day is a week. But each time, hearing Cecil’s voice is like cool water against a sunburn (he doesn’t think he’s ever been this tanned in his life). He talks about Doug and Alicia, rambles on about science and promises to look for the doors and doesn’t say there aren’t any.

Cecil asks about the voicemail one night, off the air and as he’s said, curled up at home with a mug of orange milk, “I haven’t listened to it. Should I?”

Carlos considers it, how much easier it would be than trying to explain everything, but also how he doesn’t have any answers yet, doesn’t know what to say to reassure Cecil that he will find a way back, so he responds, “You don’t have to, I was drunk and rambling a lot.”

“Carlos,” Cecil says his name with a sigh, soft and wanting, but also pleading.

“I – I'll tell you everything, I promise Cecil, I just need to be certain. I’m going to find a way back to you,” Carlos responds and it’s not enough but it settles some of the guilt which bunches up in his chest when he thinks about how little he’s actually done. He’s looked for the doors, but there aren’t any, he could fashion a door out of wood but he’s not certain how well that will work considering the doors were never just doors. He suspects they were rifts in between the reality of Night Vale and whatever the desert otherworld is.

“I know Carlos, I believe in you, you’ll find your way back and I’ll be waiting,” Cecil responds and Carlos pictures his hand warm on Carlos’ cheeks, his eyes glinting in the lights of his apartment.

“Even the heat death of the universe won’t stop me,” Carlos responds and Cecil laughs and they move onto other topics, the opera house, Hiram and the Faceless Old Woman’s attempts on Dana – Mayor Cardinal’s life and Carlos wishes he could be there in the midst of the chaos once more.

The dreams don’t stop, they keep coming. Always beginning with the subway car rattling along the tracks and Huntokar staring at him, sometimes she seems closer, sometimes a breath away and he can tell the deer mask is not a mask. Some dreams are just that, the two of them staring at each other as the subway rattles and threatens to topple off the tracks with a screech of sparks.

Sometimes, the dream will shift, Carlos will fall through the doors of the subway car, he’ll float in space falling through the clouds until they surround him, glowing in pulses like firing neurons, and his mind will fold and bend to match the pulses of the cloud. He’ll land on his feet eventually and then he’s running, from the thing that barks behind him, when he looks back, he sees nothing, not even darkness, a nothing that is by nature indescribable and it terrifies him. Sometimes there is a light so bright and consuming, the muscles of his jaw locked into a smile.

And it ends with a door. A door in his mind that he can see, can feel the cool metal of the knob beneath his feet it turns slightly when he adds pressure and he knows he could open it and see the terrible truth that is hidden behind this door. He knows in a sort of distant dream logic sort of way that opening the door will change everything, but it will also bring him home.

Roughly a week later, by the passing of the sun, they return within a few miles of the mountain and the lighthouse, which had been visible even from the farthest point of their circle, more of an ellipse really. Carlos spends the rest of the day with the masked warriors but as the sun starts its sluggish descent towards the horizon, he lets Alicia pull him into a hug, pressing a rough horn, carved of precious wood, and a long spear which looks like an arrow in Alicia’s palm, into his hands saying earnestly, “If you’re in trouble don’t hesitate to call us.”

Doug ruffles Carlos hair, something the others have taken to doing, and says, “You are always welcome Scientist.”

“Thank you, for everything,” Carlos says, his hand like that of a child’s in the giant’s grasp.

He sets out from the camp waving to the other masked giants, vaguely planning to meet up with them in a week’s time if everything doesn’t go according to plan. He treks across the desert in the direction of the lighthouse, his feet tripping over the sand the only sound in the quiet. Even the hum of the sun heating the sand is gone and he is alone.

He sets up camp in a small alcove of rocks a mile or so away from the mountain, which he will still have to scale tomorrow. He’s quick at putting up the tent now and starts a small fire with the wood he’s collected as they’ve travelled. It’s still not as nice a fire as Cecil’s, but the warm glow chases away the chill as he stares out at the desert his knees tucked to his chest.

He wonders if this is what it would be like on Mars, he dreamed of being an astronaut, don’t all kids? He used to love sci-fi as a kid, the idea of all that unexplored territory, alien lifeforms, laser swords. Night Vale has a lot of those things in common, he swore he once saw the sheriff with a lightsaber, it was plastic and for a pretty cool interpretative dance, but still.

Carlos imagines Mars must be like this, dusty and red during the day and the cool grey-blue of night, except he vaguely recalls that night is yellow on Mars. He imagines it, being the only person on an entire planet, how lonely that must be, not to mention all the sand.

He calls Cecil and gets a sleepy, “C’los?” in response.

Carlos laughs, a breathy chuckle as he lays on his back staring up at the stars, “Hi Cecil, did I wake you?”

“Mmm, I was watching reruns of… Hell’s Kitchen, where they, you know, inside a kitchen that’s literally Hell,” Cecil mumbles drifting slightly and Carlos can picture him passed out on the couch, one hand hanging off and his mouth open; Cecil looks not younger in his sleep, but softer like he’s just an impression of himself.

“Was it good?”

“Mhmm one guy got vaporized,” Cecil responds followed by the sound of shifting fabric and then, “Ugh the Faceless Old Woman turned on all the lights,” he pauses and then softer, “I – you know the intern who saved Mayor Cardinal from the furniture?”

He makes a sound of acknowledgement and there’s the sound of Cecil exhaling slowly, that way he does when he’s frustrated and tired and Carlos just wants to hold his boyfriend thank you very much.

“I – it turns out it was actually me who saved Dana. But I have no memory of doing it I think – I think whoever bought lot 37, you remember?” Carlos hums, “I think they used me to save her.”

“Cecil… I’m sorry someone made you do that against your will,” the words sound hollow and he hates giving platitudes, hates trying to give comfort when he’s just bad at it, he’s better when he can hold Cecil in his arms, “Do you have any idea who controlled you?”

“No, the records are all gone due to the antiques and I’ve asked but no one who is there remembers. I – I’m worried it might be Dana or someone else I know,” Cecil confesses his breathing is shaky and it makes Carlos think of wrapping an arm around Cecil in the twilight hours before he would get up for work when Strexcorp owned the station, the way he would shake.

“I’m sure it’s not Dana,” Carlos reassures his boyfriend as best as he can, “You’re a great journalist I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks, Carlos,” he sounds better but that’s not a great indicator when Cecil’s always been good at moderating his voice, it’s his face that gives him away, “How was your day?”

They talk for a while longer but what happened to Cecil sits on the edge of his mind like he’s balancing on a knife. He should have been there for Cecil, should be there now, and even if he couldn’t do anything to stop it, he could be there to help in the aftermath.

That night he dreams of the subway car again, Huntokar is close, so close he can feel her breath on his cheeks. She blinks, those dark eyes, beady like that of a stuffed animal, and then she moves. One hand rests on his cheek, the same temperature as his body, barely a sensation. Then she smiles, it is not a kind smile but it is not the smile of the Smiling God. It’s a mother’s smile but it is not kind. Huntokar leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead.

He wakes in the dark of the early morning, in the distance he can see a lizard, of normal size, skittering across the rocks. He turns his face to the mountain and the lighthouse on its peak and rises to his feet. He packs away his tent and covers the fire, his mind for once is quiet, just a buzz of knowing what he is going to do.

The mountain is small for a mountain, which is a blessing, Carlos ties his lab coat around his waist and begins the climb. The sun begins to fill the sky, fighting with the golden light of the Smiling God, when he’s roughly halfway up the mountain. He pauses on the ledge for a breakfast of water and leftover cactus patties, watching the desert spread out before him.

He reaches the top of the mountain just as the sun is beginning to crown the sky, he is drenched in sweat, panting for breath as he collapses where the ground plateaus for a moment. Then his body registers how hot the rock is and he jolts to his feet hissing and rubbing at his arms as if it might alleviate the heat. He downs the rest of his water and stares up at the lighthouse.

It’s a picturesque sort of lighthouse, the kind one might see in a frame on a living room wall, white with red accents. Carlos stumbles forward, dragging his feet as if through quicksand and at the same time it’s as if he’s running. He pauses at the front of the lighthouse, there is a door set into the wall of the lighthouse, it matches the one in his mind.

Carlos inhales shakily and reaches out resting his fingers lightly on the doorknob, which is cool even beneath the unrelenting sun. He exhales and turns the knob pushing the door open.

Cool air leaks out from the open doorway, one which peers out into an inky black nothingness like the void of space. Carlos glances once over his shoulder at the desert and steps through the doorway.

The nothingness surrounds him and the door closes shut behind him but remains, floating, unattached with nothing on either side. She folds out of the darkness standing beside him staring at the darkness before them.

“I was wondering if you would open the door,” Huntokar says, she turns to face Carlos and he mimics the motion, like a mirror. She smiles showing teeth not like a military cemetery, but rounded like crowns, “My perfect Carlos,” she says it in the same tone of voice as Cecil, “So curious, the others are so like you and yet they all miss this crucial detail.”

He’s confused, the words make no sense, wrapping around him like bubble wrap. Huntokar tilts her head, a slow blink, “You wanted to _know_ , didn’t you? You’ve been putting the pieces together for a while, haven’t you?”

He nods it feels right.

She turns one arm outstretched and the darkness bleeds away into the earth, and he says it at last, “The world ended in 1983.”

Huntokar nods, “The Destroyer, that is what they call me for that is what I am,” Carlos watches the missiles begin to fly, a mistake, a stupid, life-ending mistake, “I never wanted to be like the others who subjugate, who destroy. I just wanted to protect them. In doing so, I destroyed it all.”

He sees it, the tears pouring from his cheeks suspended in the void, as the realities, _all_ the realities split apart and collide with each other. Splintering. A million different possibilities, a million different lives. And Cecil, like the centre of a mandala, spreading a pattern from each reality to the next, to the next, to the next. Desert Bluffs, the city under bowling lane 5, the desert otherworld. Realities where Cecil had a brother, realities where Carlos never existed, where he wasn’t a scientist.

The world ended and all realities ended prolonged in their death throes and they have no choice but to live in the last gasps of a thousand realities.

“Why?” Carlos gasps, the word torn from his lips, he cannot quantify how he is supposed to feel, to comprehend. But Huntokar was right, he has known for a while now, all the inconsistencies, the way his memories before Night Vale are blurry, contradicting, Cecil’s old tapes from before he became the Voice.

He’s a scientist, he examines, he finds out why the universe, why the world functions as it does.

Huntokar is looking into his eyes and she nods, “That’s why, you understand why now,” her hand is on his cheek again, the imitation of comfort, “I’ve always loved Night Vale, in return, they created their bloodstone circles, their soft meat crowns. You love it too, don’t you? Always the outsider Carlos, you are the Mind which seeks to understand, to categorize, to give thought to the Voice,” She smiles, fingers running through his hair, the other cradling his skull.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Carlos questions, his voice is rough, broken, as if he hasn’t spoken for years, centuries, millennia. Maybe he hasn’t.

“Return to Cecil, hold onto this knowledge, you will need it, I think. But there is nothing to do,” she gestures at the realities which split and slam into each other, the worlds melding and dancing, “It has already been destroyed. All you can do is understand.”

Carlos sobs and she makes a shushing sound, but there is no consolation, not for this. He blinks and the darkness melts away, a cold win ruffles through his hair and when he opens his eyes, he is at the bottom of the mountain staring up at the lighthouse. The door in his mind is open now, he can feel it like a blister on his heel, like ice on a burn.

He turns mechanically and sets up camp, his mind is blank, a protective sort of blankness, still swaddling itself in bubble wrap. He doesn’t think compartmentalization is going to help here. But he tries, the knowledge looms in his mind threatening to drown out everything like an air raid siren. He tries to be logical, puts the pieces of the puzzle together, the other realities, the cycle of death and life continuing in Night Vale, Cecil as the Voice as a centre, Carlos as the Mind but there are no others like him because he is the outsider, and this is the centre of it all.

Carlos plays Cecil’s voicemail and falls into a fitful dreamless sleep, the death of all coiling behind his eyelids in pops and bursts of colour and light. How do you comprehend the end? It’s one thing to live with the knowledge of someday, even a near date in the future, but the after was never something he contemplated; it was supposed to just end.

But it didn’t. Life went on even when it was destroyed.

Carlos wakes to the sound of footsteps, jolting out of his barely asleep state as one hand wraps around his pocketknife. He blinks once, slowly and sees no one in the tent. He moves slowly and opens the tent one hand hovering over the horn the masked warriors gifted him.

At the other side of his camp walking slowly, swaying, is Cecil. No – not Cecil the hair is parted on the wrong side and even in the half-light of the Smiling God something is different. Then the man collapses to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! Kevin makes his appearance, let me know if y'all want an ot3, currently, I have other plans but it's pretty flexible. Comments are always appreciated, I probably won't be able to post again till March. Till next time!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all I'm here with another chapter, originally this was going to be one chapter, but it got way too long so I've split it in half. I've also finally caught up on WTNV so that is nice. Anyways, read on and enjoy!

Carlos stares for a long moment, trying to process the sight, trying to process things in general, thinking maybe it’s a mirage or a nightmare. But he blinks and the body is still there lying pitifully in the sand. Carlos inhales, fills up his lungs and with his hand still clenched around the knife rises to his feet.

The sun is blinding and hot even on the cusp of the sky and, in the distance, he can see the light of the Smiling God as he approaches the body. He hesitates, crouching beside the man, whose face is pressed into the sand, he’ll have to put down his knife to roll him over.

It could be a trap, some last remnant of Strexcorp or maybe just the desert itself. But Carlos really can’t just leave him there.

Cursing under his breath, Carlos sets the knife down and with a careful push rolls the man over. He still looks like Cecil, the resemblance is close enough that for a moment his heart stops in his chest and he wonders if it really is Cecil, that he’s somehow found a door and came to find Carlos.

But there are differences, the parting of their hair for one, there’s a scar near the hairline on the man’s head that Carlos knows Cecil doesn’t have and the man is missing the small scar Cecil has on his left ear from a piercing that didn’t heal correctly. This must be Cecil’s double, that would be the logical conclusion, though Carlos isn’t ruling out camouflaging robots or tangible mirages.

Kevin, that was the man’s name, the radio host of Desert Bluffs.

Carlos is tempted to leave him for a moment, pack up his tent and get as far away as possible before his guilty conscious can strike and just assure himself that everything’s fine. But Carlos can’t, that’s not who he is as a person, that’s not what a scientist would do, and after seeing it all, feeling those realities touch him in return, knowing that Kevin is what Cecil could have been, he can’t.

He checks his pulse, weak and fluttery, and takes a closer observation. Kevin’s skin is sunburned, particularly his arms and legs as well as wind burned in some places and Carlos can see a clear indication of dehydration in his chapped lips. Frowning, Carlos still crouched over the body, places his hands on his hips.

The easy thing to do would be to find the masked warriors and deposit Kevin into their care. Where, he would be at little risk of actively harming them, but he reckons they’re still at least five days away (how long was he in the lighthouse? It feels as if aeons have passed, time itself feels fuzzy at the moment, something half-read).

Which leaves Carlos to take care of him because as he’s already established, he can’t just leave him. Great. He can just hear Cecil, he should probably call him, throwing a fit about how dangerous it is. Which to be fair it probably is quite dangerous.

Carlos shakes his head and tucks the knife into his pocket before he carefully lifts Kevin’s body into his arms. He’s the same height as Cecil and in consequence, is the same awkward weight of limbs that forces Carlos to try and wade through the sand the short distance to the tent.

Once inside, Carlos sets Kevin on the ground where’s he left the extra blankets and surveys the tent. He can feel a panic attack just waiting but forces himself to focus on how to secure Kevin if he wakes and is violent. If only he had thought to bring zip ties.

Carlos settles for tearing a strip of fabric from the end of his lab coat, it won’t do anything to stop Kevin if he’s anywhere near as strong as Cecil, but it will buy him a few seconds. He secures Kevin’s wrist to one of the support poles of the tent and then digs through his pack to pull out the salve the healer showed him how to make. His water bottle has maybe a quarter left and he frowns thinking of leaving Kevin alone even if it’s necessary.

He places that as a later problem and crouches at Kevin’s side, he’s in the remnants of a suit, the jacket is gone and the sleeves are torn at the elbows as are the pants at the knees. Carlos applies the salve to the worst of the sunburns and carefully tips water down the man’s throat until the bottle is drained.

Kevin is still the whole time and it’s unnervingly like handling a specimen for dissection the few times he took a bio course. After Carlos has done all he can with his meagre supplies he leans against the opposite wall of the tent and just stops.

When he comes back to himself, the sun is shimmering on the horizon, the golden glow opposite seems a sickly green, and Kevin hasn’t moved. Carlos scrubs a hand over his face his mouth is tacky and disgusting, he craves coffee suddenly and strong enough that he swears he can almost smell it for a moment and okay maybe he cries a little bit.

Then he pulls out his phone and calls Cecil. Carlos runs a hand over the seam of his jeans as the cellphone dials and tries to keep breathing through his nose. If he lets himself think about it, think about the door in his mind hanging open, inviting, warning, then he won’t be able to stop.

It goes to voicemail and Carlos feels another sob building up in his chest and he can’t stop the rough exhale that punches out of his chest before he can catch it. He swallows, thinks of Cecil at the station, his hands gesturing about some story and says, “Hey Cecil, sorry I missed you, things have been happening here, a lot happened and I just – I need to speak to you. Call me back when you can. Love you.”

He stares at the phone for a long moment after he ends the call before he rises to his feet and shoves it back into his pocket. The sun is the rind of a melon on the horizon as Carlos grabs the water bottle and digs through his pack until he finds the water skin Alicia lent him, it’s almost as big as his thigh, but at this rate, he’ll need it.

Carlos spares a glance at Kevin, watches the rise and fall of his chest, a part of him, the monkey brain part is just relieved to see another human being, the rest of him cowers uneasily and thinks about coming back to find everything gone. It’s not like he has much of a choice either way.

He scouts around the small cluster of rocks he’s set up camp in, there are a few shrubby bushes growing against an outcropping, and in the silence of the night he can hear the distant gurgling of a water source. Following the sound for roughly fifteen minutes, Carlos stumbles upon a small pool with an acacia tree bent half over the little bed of water almost concealing it.

A lizard skitters away in the pale blue of the evening as the sun finally begins to dip beneath the horizon. Carlos fills the water skin and the water bottle and though he’s tempted to survey more of the land he turns and makes his way back to the tent.

He empties half of the water bottle himself then does the same for Kevin before settling on the cot opposite him, his knees tucked to his chest. He still feels too wired to sleep, heck he feels as if he’s nearly vibrating out of his skin, like all the events of the day translated to kinetic energy and are now all bound up beneath his skin. He wants to take notes on what he saw try to construct some explanation even though there is none, or to go for a run until it all falls away again.

Instead, he sits there and watches Kevin breathe, the sound filling up the tent. Carlos watches him shiver and before he can think about it, he drapes his lab coat over the man and his heart pangs all over again for Cecil at the sight of the man who looks like Cecil wrapped in his coat.

He can’t ignore the door in his mind now, it’s like a blister popped, it’s a hangnail torn off, it’s the sensation of wind on the back of your neck after a haircut. He _knows_ he can look through that door, see the realities crashing and colliding into each other, see how reality itself shapes and shifts, accommodating disturbances, twisting in on itself, a strange sort of auto-cannibalism. He doesn’t know if he’d be able to look away.

Carlos falls asleep somewhere in the early hours of the morning, for a moment he thinks the dreams will have stopped, that it’ll instead be that strange mixture of the day’s events and thoughts twisted to surrealism. Instead, the subway car rattles beneath his feet, Huntokar stands right in front of him and she is smiling.

The subway car melts away and Carlos walks through a Night Vale that isn’t his own, it’s a ghost town, not literally, the air is acrid and he stumbles towards the radio station but before he can open the door it’s a different reality, and another, and another. 

He jerks into waking suddenly, none of the sleepy haze of a soft morning, instead, his breath collects frantically in his chest and he sits up one hand pressed to his diaphragm until it settles again. Carlos scrubs a hand over his face and glances to the side, Kevin is still asleep though it appears he’s shifted onto his side at some point during the night.

Carlos rises, becomes immediately aware of the ache of his body, and contemplates lying back down for a fraction of a second before he hisses through the pain and moves. He crouches beside Kevin smearing salve over his arms and legs with brusque efficiency (and definitely not thinking about Cecil), forces some water, gently, down his throat and has a cold breakfast of cactus patties.

He spends the rest of the day surveying the area, he finds one of the masked warriors’ patches of tubers and takes a few, he also sees a total of three lizards, two with obvious mutations or evolutionary adaptations different from known species (including those in Night Vale), and takes notes on his phone.

As he walks his mind circles around it all again, except now he’s passed from terror and incomprehension to curiosity, which is a far more comforting state of mind. He wonders if there are other patterns beyond Cecil, if worlds without a Cecil or somehow less stable, how ‘outsiders’ such as himself work, he can clearly remember a time before Night Vale and technology advanced beyond that of the ’80s. Was that just another Night Vale? Or an aspect of this reality that includes a Night Vale-esque outside world? If so, Carlos is a scientist, he learned scientific principles that were applicable before reality was shattered, which in some way suggests that the place he came from must have a ‘normal’ understanding of the universe unless his understanding is also that of a different reality?

In a way, he knows if he went through the door in his mind, if he observed, he could find answers.

Evening settles quickly over the desert and Carlos fashions a rough stew out of tubers and dried lizard jerky and eats in silence his heart aching longingly to hear Cecil talk about the community calendar or the latest PTA meeting. Something to fill the silence beyond the dull noise of living.

And then, Kevin shifts.

Carlos freezes his spoon halfway to his mouth before he drops it back in the bowl with narrow eyes and pulls out his knife levelling it at the man. For a moment there’s tense silence but for the crackle of the fire. Then Kevin blinks once, slowly, and opens his eyes, squinting at the fire.

He’s confused, the expression obvious on his features, even with his eyes, which are certainly _something_. Carlos tightens his grasp on the knife and calculates he has a decent chance of survival if Kevin does decide to attack him. He’s lost some weight already in the desert, but Kevin is still dehydrated and sunburned.

“Hello?” Kevin says, voice hoarse and without the radio cadence, shifting before abruptly realising his hand is tied to the tent pole. Carlos watches his brow furrow as he shifts slowly upward with a hiss and then his eyes flicker over the fire to Carlos, then Carlos’ knife.

“Are you thirsty?”

Kevin blinks glancing from the knife, to his hand, back to Carlos and nods. Still pointing the knife in Kevin’s direction, he pulls out the water bottle and hands it to Kevin, he watches carefully as the man takes slow and small sips.

When the water is gone Carlos asks, “Soup?”

Again, another nod and Carlos tops up his own bowl and passes it in silence to Kevin. He studies it for a minute before he begins to eat, and then as if realising his hunger, devours the bowl in less than a minute.

“You’re the scientist,” Kevin says, then as if in afterthought adds, “Cecil’s scientist.”

Carlos nods tightening his grip around the knife, can feel a frown tugging at his face and asks, “What do you remember?”

Kevin frowns, his whole face scrunched up, it’s the same expression as Cecil when he’s trying to remember a small tidbit from a news story. He shakes his head in frustration and says, “It’s fragmented, but there was a fight? In Night Vale, we tried to bring forth the Smiling God… I – I can’t feel it.”

The last part is panicked and there’s a shocked expression on Kevin’s face as he glances around the tent and demands, “Where are we?”

“The desert otherworld,” Carlos cleans the bowl out with sand, there’s a sort of calm like when he’s in the middle of a highly volatile experiment settling over him as if all he can do is wait for the result, he continues, “As to your ‘connection’, I theorize when I used the device to halt the Smiling God’s materialization within Night Vale it created a disturbance in its connection with its practitioners. It’s probably temporary if that’s at all reassuring.”

Kevin stares at Carlos for a long moment, his expression is strange, a little bit lost, pained, and confused all at once. He shakes his head and says “It’s – everything is strange, in my mind, I can feel what it’s supposed to be like, what I’m supposed to think. Or what I’m not supposed to think.”

Carlos nods, offering Kevin the water skin he says, “Huntokar mentioned the Smiling God was one of the aspects which exerted control over its subjects, you may be experiencing disassociation or a disconnect because of the separation.”

His mind is racing, focusing on Kevin like he’s a new scientific discovery and Carlos almost feels bad but it’s better than thinking about the door. Kevin’s brow furrows and he says, “Huntokar, I’ve heard that name before.”

Carlos just nods, glancing out through the tent flap where the sky is the same shade of blue as the tile at the pool he used to swim in, a watery dark blue. He turns back to Kevin and catches sight of him yawning as he asks, “Can I trust you not to try and murder me in my sleep?”

Kevin blinks surprised and protests slightly, “You saved me I wouldn’t hurt someone who saved me.”

“Well, I don’t want any ‘friendly’ hugs either,” Carlos retorts scrubbing a hand over his face he glances into what could generously be described as Kevin’s eyes and says, “If you hurt me Cecil will find you and he will not be kind enough to grant you anything so nice as death. I made a promise that I would return to him and you will not stop me.”

Carlos watches as Kevin blinks, apparently slightly impressed, and nods once in agreement. Nodding in response Carlos settles on the cot and tosses Kevin a blanket before he rolls over and faces the tent wall.

He hears a tentative, “Good night.”

“Night.”

Carlos is jerked abruptly into consciousness, pulled from the by now almost soothing rattle of the subway car, into the waking world by the wail of his cellphone. He blinks blearily into the darkness and fumbles for it.

He glances briefly at Kevin, still asleep, and in the darkness, he looks just like Cecil, he thinks about mirages, seeing something you can’t have. Carlos scrubs a hand over his face and steps out of the tent, the night air is cool against his skin as he answers the call.

“Hello?”

“Carlos,” Cecil’s voice clamed up with worry and concern.

“Cecil,” He exhales the name, settling in the sand with his knees tucked to his chest, peering at the darkness around him slowly blending out into shades of grey.

Cecil inhales over the phone and Carlos wonders if he’s just finished his radio show, or maybe he’s sitting at home, he asks, “Are you okay? I received your voicemail and I called back as soon as I could.”

He pauses for a moment, when he had called Cecil earlier, he had been desperate for comfort, for someone to tell him everything would be okay and in some ways he still is. He asks, “Did you ever listen to that voice mail I sent you?”

There’s a pause and Carlos can picture Cecil’s face scrunched up in confusion before he smoothes it out and replies, “I – no you didn’t want me to listen to it, so I didn’t.”

He swallows, the words all feel so heavy, like they’re weighted to each rib of his ribcage, dragging with each breath, “Can you listen to it please? It’ll make this easier to explain, I think.”

“Okay, I’ll call you back when I’m done.”

“I’ll be here,” Carlos responds with a barely-there huff of laughter before the call ends and he pulls the phone away from his face. He stares out at the desert wondering if Cecil will even call back within the next hour.

He closes his eyes, the weight of the phone in his hands, and the desert air cool in his lungs as he breathes. Carlos feels half-asleep by the time the phone rings again and he shakes his head, as if to clear away the clinging remnants of sleep, and answers the call.

For a long moment, there’s just the sound of the two of them breathing over the line before Cecil says, “The door, did you open it?”

“Yes,” Carlos almost sobs, shivering and tucking his knees tight against his chest as he continues, “She was there, in my dreams, I –,”

“Who Carlos?”

“Huntokar,” the name breathes like a sigh from his lips like the very chill of the night, “I saw it Cecil, all of it. I can’t – can’t close the door again I can’t not see. But I know how to get home now.”

“Oh Carlos,” Cecil says his name, that same cadence that used to make him blush but now just fills him with warmth.

He rubs at the tears on his cheeks with a rough exhale and he can feel the sobs just building up, he hates crying, hates the whole mess of it, the way his eyes sting and it’s just a horrible sensation but it’s better when Cecil wraps his arms around him after a long day at the lab, his hand rubbing soothing circles into his spine. He can’t have that right now, so instead, he sniffs and says, “But I can’t – I can’t come home just yet.”

“For science,” His voice is tight and as much as he tries to hide his disappointment Carlos can hear it.

“No babe, not because of science, even science wouldn’t keep me from you if I could be home right now,” he trails off for a moment, glancing over his shoulder at the tent before he continues, “I met someone in the desert, someone who needs my help.”

There’s silence for a moment then Cecil asks, barely a whisper, “Who is it?”

“Kevin.”

“Carlos,” His name seems to mean so many things these days, please don’t do this, I love you, I don’t want you to get hurt.

He exhales scrubbing a hand over his face again, “He’s not like before – the Smiling God it’s distant. I can help him, or at least I think, I know I could help him. I can’t just leave him Cecil, that’s not what a scientist is and I – I promise I won’t be long, I want to see you so much,” he laughs almost a sob, “I miss you so much.”

“Okay,” Cecil says finally, the sound of his breathing echoing across the line, “Okay, I trust you, Carlos. I miss you too and I love you.”

“I love you too Cecil.”

The call ends and Carlos exhales, his breath misting in front of him before he turns and enters the tent once again. He glances at Kevin, his face smoothed out with sleep and one hand knotted in the blanket. Then Carlos sinks into the dreams once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! I have the next chapter pretty much finished and will hopefully post it soon, school permitting. Comments are always super appreciated till next time!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone I am back with another chapter! This one deals more with Kevin and warning for spoilers for Triptych as I moved that back a bit in the timeline. Anyways, read on and enjoy!

They spend the next two days in a tense and tentative peace, Carlos can’t help but be cautious around Kevin even as he helps rub salve into his arms and legs, and tips water down his throat. Kevin is quiet, almost unnervingly so, watching as Carlos returns with the water skin, or after two hours, with one lizard and a scowl. At night they sit quietly over their rough dinner and Carlos can practically see Kevin searching, thinking, analysing. There’s a tangible feeling to the man, like Carlos could reach out and _see_ into his mind, instead, he just watches.

On the third day, Kevin follows Carlos to the small watering hole, squinting in the bright sun even as his eyes track the lizards which scamper across the desert. By the time they reach the grove, Kevin is panting and Carlos settles on the sand in the shade of an acacia tree for a break.

Kevin settles beside him, trailing his fingers through the water, he turns to Carlos and asks, “Are you going to return to Night Vale?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t suppose you would accept science as an answer?” Carlos asks, running his fingers through the sand, in the distance the Smiling God bathes the side of the lighthouse in gold, he shivers.

Kevin’s eyes narrow and he says slowly, “Before I – before I found you, something happened.”

Carlos tips back his head and laughs, the sound high and gasping, he catches himself before it can turn into a sob and says, “I opened the door, the one in my mind and she showed me everything.”

There’s silence for a long time, there are no clouds today and the sky is a pale shade of blue, almost a white. Kevin frowns, his expression puzzled and so like Cecil’s. Carlos leans forward his forehead almost pressed to Kevin’s, “I can almost see your mind, bathed in the glow of your Smiling God, like the roots of a tree, burrowed so deep, but it doesn’t touch everything.”

Kevin’s eyes are wide, his breath held, he asks, “Could you fix it?”

Carlos pulls away, tilting his head back against the tree, “Depends on your definition of fix. I can’t reconnect you to your God, but I think I could put the hesitation away, behind a – a door.”

Kevin is silent, his expression is pensive. They head back to camp and Carlos settles in the shade of the tent outside in the sand with the few herbs he’s gathered, a large rock, and his knife, they’ll need more salve soon.

He begins grinding the herbs, distantly aware of Kevin attempting to use the spear Alicia gave him to hunt any lizard that comes too close.

The door in his mind hangs open, his hand latches around the doorknob, not to close it, not to pull it open, and he looks through the doorway. He can see it all, spread out before him as many realities as the sand surrounding him.

The next thing he’s aware of, truly aware of, is the rush of lukewarm water running down his spine. He blinks and shakes his head, disoriented and a bit dizzy he glances at his surroundings.

The sun which was at its zenith last he checked is now sinking towards the horizon and Kevin is standing in front of him holding the water bottle, his chest heaving. Carlos swallows, his mouth dry, and asks, “Kevin?”

“You weren’t responding,” Kevin says his voice panicked, Carlos glances down at his arms and winces noticing the already reddening sunburn. He holds out a hand and Kevin passes him the water bottle, he drains it.

“Sorry.”

“I tried to call your name but I uh didn’t want to touch you without your permission,” Kevin responds sounding unsure.

Carlos nods rising to his feet he tugs off his shirt and rings out the excess water, “Thank you I appreciate that you respected my boundaries.”

“Oh,” Is all that Kevin says in response, Carlos glances at him in confusion before noticing his staring.

He glances down at his chest where his scars are, they’re all but healed now, hardly noticeable against his skin but still there, reminders of another time. He asks, “Are these a problem?”

Kevin shakes his head, “No, not at all,” his voice is almost soft and it reminds Carlos of when Cecil first saw the scars, the way he just held Carlos and whispered to him a mantra of incomprehensible words but still tangible with so much love.

Carlos nods and tugs the shirt over his head again, he shifts for a moment before he says, “Thank you.”

Kevin nods and follows Carlos into the tent where he digs out the last of the salve, he can deal with the herbs he was trying to ground later. For now, he drinks from the water skin and smoothes the salve over his arms and legs; he supposes he’ll match Kevin now.

That night they eat the lizards Kevin managed to catch (3, Carlos is not at all bitter, really), sitting across from each other over the fire. It’s almost peaceful, almost a vacation of sorts from Night Vale where there seems to be a state of emergency at least twice a week, but it’s also so incredibly not.

“Do you remember what Desert Bluffs was like, before Strex Corp took over?” Carlos asks, aching to fill the silence in some way.

Kevin stirs, as if from a daze, his face scrunches and he shrugs, “Well I can imagine it wasn’t as wonderful as Desert Bluffs is under Strex Corp’s control,” he pauses for a moment, “I think – well I know there were less add spots, that stood out in my mind, but add spots are great. I – I think we were all less happy, we were sad sometimes, I don’t like being sad.”

“Would you rather have no sadness at all?” Carlos questions sticking his hands close to the fire and ignoring the way the movement pulls at his sunburned skin.

“I am happy even when I’m sad because the Smiling God is always with me.”

“There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t know where to begin,” Carlos says scrubbing a hand over his face, he continues, “Do you remember what you were like, before the Smiling God?”

“I -It’s clearer now than it was before, I think I didn’t want it? By why wouldn’t I want the Smiling God and Strex Corp’s intervention? They’ve made me so happy, really given my life a purpose.”

“Do you know what’s happened to Desert Bluffs lately?” Carlos questions glancing away from Kevin’s face, a part of him feels pity for Kevin. He shakes his head and Carlos continues, “Strex Corp was bought by the Angels. They’re using the company for an opera house from what Cecil told me. Desert Bluffs, without Strex Corp isn’t doing well, considering Strex was practically the job market. Cecil hasn’t said as much but it doesn’t look good.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Kevin asks his voice wavers.

Carlos stares into the fire watches it flicker, sending little sparks into the night air, he sighs, “What do you want Kevin?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can either stay here, hoping that the Smiling God will return to you, maybe you can start your own town or cohabitate with a group of masked warriors start your own broadcast here in the desert otherworld. Or you come back with me, to Night Vale where they all remember what happened, to a Desert Bluffs without Strex, will you try to reinstate it, the control of the Smiling God? Do you want to go back to the radio to a Desert Bluffs that won’t be like you remember?” Carlos rambles, picking the first few options that come to mind, the variables are practically endless and watches Kevin’s face from across the fire.

He’s frowning, the expression is different from Cecil’s, pulls more at his lips than his brow, as he shakes his head, “I – I don’t know yet,” he pauses, “I know we can’t stay here forever, a part of me still thinks we can, like those summer vacations that just never seemed to end.”

Carlos nods and doesn’t push.

They don’t talk much the rest of the night and when Carlos’ phone starts ringing, he waves a hand and walks a short distance away to another small cluster of rocks. The fire glows like a firefly in the distance.

“Hi Cecil.”

“Hi Carlos,” Cecil says back and it makes Carlos feel giddy like a schoolchild with their first crush. Cecil continues, “I’m not at the radio station.”

Carlos can practically hear him purr the last words and he laughs as he responds, “Unfortunately I’m not quite as alone as you are, discounting the Faceless Old Woman of course.”

“Of course,” Cecil responds the pout practically audible, before he pauses, collecting his thoughts, “Something strange happened today at work.”

“Lot 37?” Carlos questions his hand tightening around the phone, he forces himself to unclench his hand slowly but can’t stop the thoughts of how he should be there for Cecil, not in the desert.

“No, thank the masters,” Cecil says his voice tight, “I tuned into another broadcast signal, it was Desert Bluffs but well time got relative! It was Kevin, but a Kevin from before Strex Corp, then Kevin right before Strex took over Night Vale, and then a Kevin that sounded old.”

“That is strange,” Carlos says puzzling over it for a long moment, perhaps an intersection of potential timelines, or the realities creating friction or a kinetic burst of energy which resulted in an overlap?

Cecil is silent for a long moment before he says quietly, “He was like me, before Strex,” a sad laugh, “He was going to fight them rather than let them take over the radio station, he liked cats! I – we could have been friends, in another reality,” they probably are, in another reality, “Do you think you can help him, Carlos?”

“I don’t know, I – we can never be the selves of our past, on a scientific level our bodies are constantly changing we are never the same collections of cells we once were, but even if he was separated from the Smiling God… everything he’s done. Maybe he could find some balance in between. But he would have to choose that, he might not want that.”

Cecil hums over the phone, there’s the sound of him shifting before he continues, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Carlos responds, thinks of Cecil running his fingers through his hair, he inhales and continues, “Tell me about your day.”

Cecil does, about the community calendar, how Night Vale desperately misses its scientist, the opera house, Dana and Lot 37. They chat for a while longer before Carlos can hear Cecil yawning over the phone and bids his boyfriend goodnight.

Kevin is quiet when he returns but he smiles in Carlos’ direction as they ready for bed. In the darkness of the tent, Carlos stares at the canvas above Kevin’s head and feels the door in his mind beckon, he slips into sleep between one breath and the next.

The next day, Carlos finishes grinding the herbs, Kevin hovering a short distance away and pretending to use the lizard bones for an arts and crafts project while glancing at Carlos every few minutes. It’s irritating but Carlos just ignores Kevin and the door to the best of his abilities, which as a scientist are many. Idly he notes that the masked warriors will be returning soon.

The day passes honey slow and they spend the afternoon in the tent, baking in the heat. Carlos plays Candy Crush on his phone and tries not to contemplate how bored he is without anything to study or his equipment.

Kevin turns to face Carlos in the silence, studying him for a long moment before he asks, “Could you – could you see, inside my mind?”

Carlos sets his phone down and rolls to face Kevin, the air seems suddenly tense as Carlos leans forward and presses his forehead gently against Kevin’s. He closes his sees and pictures a door, he wraps his fingers gently around the handle and whispers, “Can I?”

“Yes.”

The door is pushed open and the sensation of his body, of the heat, seems to fall away as Carlos steps forward. Kevin’s mind is – how do you describe a mind? The complex tangle and interweave of thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, and so much more. There is no structure, no waiting room for thoughts, no colourful fireworks for emotions.

Carlos can feel her behind him, the hot breath of her snout brushes against his cheek as Carlos reaches out, half instinct, half observation of reality, and what is reality but a reflection of the smallest organisms?

He takes the strands touched by the Smiling God and places them behind a door, he takes that which was before and places it behind another door and Huntokar laughs, the sound like the elapse of nature growing. Whispers of Janus drift from his faint memory of an English course as he examines the mind before him, still free to choose, as whole as one can be after being touched by an aspect.

He steps back, feels Huntokar’s breath hot and the smell of the desert once before it is gone. He closes the door and opens his eyes.

Carlos immediately collapses backwards with a groan; a migraine is pounding behind his eyes and his mouth is parched. The distant sound of Kevin making a pained sound is enough to galvanize Carlos into struggling upwards, his limbs feel heavy and shake trying to hold up his weight but he manages it.

Kevin’s eyes are closed and he’s breathing heavily, Carlos reaches out pressing his fingers against his pulse, fluttery but there, and says, “Kevin?”

No response. Carlos privately worries that he’s killed Kevin or irreparably damaged his mind as he reaches for the water skin, taking a long sip before doing the same for Kevin. He takes about ten minutes to an hour to have a moment and then he rises to his feet and goes to start dinner, keeping half an eye on Kevin the whole time.

As the sun begins to sink below the horizon casting the world in shades of blue, Kevin groans and opens his eyes. Carlos hands him a bowl of tuber and cacti stew in silence and then the water bottle. Kevin takes a sip of water and then begins to eat the stew.

When he’s finished Carlos asks, “How are you feeling?”

“Strange,” Kevin responds, the cadence of his voice is off, not wrong, just different, “It’s like I can see it, before Strex, the Smiling God, as if from a distance. I – I can see what I was thinking, how I was influenced, but also, I can still feel that belief. What did you do?”

“I gave you the option to choose,” Carlos says, drawing equations in the sand so he doesn’t have to look at Kevin as he continues, “You can go back to Strex, to the Smiling God, it’ll be just like before, but well Strex is gone. You can’t go back to who you were before the Smiling God, but you can throw off its influence, be someone similar. You’ll have to deal with what you’ve done, who you were, either way, but this time you have a choice.”

Kevin glances down at the bowl for a long moment, the air seems to hang, dry and dense, before he looks up and crooks a tiny smile, “Thank you, Carlos.”

He nods and they don’t speak for the rest of the night. In his dreams, Huntokar smiles, if possible, wider than before, she looks _proud_.

The next morning is quiet, Carlos wakes slowly, the sort of slow waking of days off and early summer mornings. Kevin is still asleep, his face screwed up into a grimace and Carlos feels a sick pang in his stomach wondering if he’s done the right thing.

Kevin wakes as Carlos is finishing breakfast, he is quiet as Carlos passes him the water skin and a bowl of tubers. He sits across from him in an awkward sort of silence and wishes that Kevin would say something. It feels as if everything had been building up to the night before and now that they’ve surpassed that goal, finished the experiment, all that’s left is the results and this time Carlos isn’t sure if he wants to see them.

Carlos offers to go fill the water skins, give Kevin some time alone; the man nods. He trudges through the sand his mind itching for something to contemplate, to observe, to make conclusions about. He can feel the door beckoning and it’s like the first time he got a library card, staring at shelf upon shelf of books and feeling all the limits he’s tried to place on himself fall away.

He fills up the water skin and the water bottle and then sits beside the water, staring at the rippling image of his face. Is it that of a stranger? Would he even know? Has he been changed? Will Cecil still love him regardless?

A part of him knows that Cecil would, that he loves an incarnation of Carlos in _so many_ different realities, a female Carlos, a doctor, a theologist, a world where Carlos is the Night Vale native and Cecil is the newcomer. Almost every single reality where they both exist in Night Vale, they love each other, in roughly fifteen they hate each other, but Carlos will take the greater percentage.

His musings are cut short by the sound of a horn bellowing through the air. He jerks to his feet, recalling the horn Alicia gave him and slinging the water skin over his shoulder he breaks in a run towards the camp.

The horn sounds again and Carlos can barely catch his breath as he skids around the rocks and into camp. Kevin is sitting in front of the tent, a startled look on his face which soothes slightly as he spots Carlos and demands, “What is that?”

Carlos feels relief wash sudden as a desert rainstorm over his shoulders as he hunches over gasping for breath, he’s getting out of shape, and responds, “The horn, the masked warriors gave me one, I think they’re nearby.”

“Oh,” Kevin responds nodding before he continues, “Are we going to do something?”

“If you’re alright with it I’d like to pack up and meet them, they helped me when I first arrived,” Carlos responds pausing to take a long sip from the water bottle.

He passes it to Kevin who frowns for a moment before he nods, “Why not? It’s always nice to make new friends.”

It almost sounds like something he would have said in the past. Carlos nods and begins the process of packing up the tent, it only takes him fifteen minutes so he’ll take it. Together, they set out across the sounds in the direction of the horn, which has stopped in its bellows.

They walk in silence for five minutes; the sun is hot as it lists towards its zenith and the sound of their breathing fills the air between them. Kevin inhales pausing slightly before he says, almost to himself, “I know what I should choose, I’m not sure what I want to choose.”

“What does your gut tell you?” Carlos asks glancing from the side at Kevin.

He frowns one hand tight around the spear as he shakes his head and says, “It would be easier, to just go back to the Smiling God, without any of the doubt, serving some higher purpose. But there’s a part of me that knows that it’s wrong, that I did horrible things and it would be easier to do those horrible things again to forget about the doubt, but I don’t want it to be easy anymore. I want to go back to Desert Bluffs, without Strex, I want to help my city rebuild itself, I want to be myself, not the self I know I can’t be again, but I want to be a me that isn’t controlled by a higher being.”

They stop, in the distance, Carlos can see the masked warriors’ camp, the tents arranged in a circle around the centre. He turns to face Kevin and takes his hands, they are calloused and half-familiar half strange, “Kevin I can’t say I don’t have personal reasons for wanting you to be free of the Smiling God’s influence, but I can tell you three true things as a scientist. First, you will have to deal with what you’ve done but so will Desert Bluffs, in fact all of us are dealing with what we’ve done all the time, two, Desert Bluffs needs you and I think you need Desert Bluffs a community radio host shouldn’t be without their community, and three I believe in you.”

Kevin nods inhaling and then he laughs, “I suppose I should wait to decide until after we’ve met the warriors?”

“That would be helpful.”

“I always aim to be helpful, friend!” Kevin responds cheerily.

Carlos shakes his head and leads Kevin down the sand dune and towards the camp. A few of the giants on the edge of camp wave upon sighting Carlos and he waves back nodding to a few of them as he makes his way through the camp, Kevin at his side staring with wide eyes at the warriors and their masks.

Alicia comes out to meet them, smiling when she sees Carlos and bending down slightly, she pulls him into a quick hug saying, “Scientist I am glad to see you are safe! You have acquired another human?”

“This is Kevin,” Carlos introduces with a small smile, Alicia offers a hand, and Kevin tentatively places his hand in hers.

Alicia smiles and leads the two of them deeper into the camp, Carlos waves to the healer, to the children he taught, and to the cook, before they slip into Doug’s tent. The giant turns from a table with a rough map spread out. He smiles, “Scientist you are well?”

Carlos nods and something must show on his expression because Alicia says, “Something has happened, have you not found a way home?”

“No, I have,” Carlos responds and it feels like a literal ache in his chest, he’s so close, he could be holding Cecil in his arms, “It just came at a slight cost,” catching sight of Kevin’s expression he adds quickly, “Not that Kevin is the cost! I’ve just learned some information I don’t know how to handle.”

Doug nods, “The weight of information can be heavy it is good to share that burden with others.”

Carlos nods, glancing briefly at Kevin and seeing Cecil before he nods. Carlos leads Kevin out of the tent and they pitch their tent together in silence, the heat of the desert is mild today, buzzing like cicada wings against his skin.

In the evening, Kevin watches attentively as the storyteller speaks, their hands waving through the air, a story of a cunning lizard and a cruel scorpion and there’s something _longing_ in his face.

They collapse in the tent, the cold of the night beginning its swift descent through the camp. Kevin curls on his side facing Carlos and he sets down his phone and stares back.

“The community they’ve built is amazing,” Kevin says quietly, more of a suggestion of conversation. Carlos nods and after a beat Kevin rolls onto his back and in a softer tone continues, “You want to return to Night Vale, soon right?”

“I – yes, but if you’re not ready Kevin I’ll wait, I’ll stay as long as you need or want me to, Cecil understands.”

“That doesn’t stop you from missing him though.”

“No, it doesn’t, but sometimes we do things even though it may hurt us because we believe in the result, because we believe in helping others, because temporary pain is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things and even if pain stands out longer in our memories, the good is still there and sometimes better because of the pain,” Carlos responds rolling onto his back.

“I know what I’m going to do. Good night Carlos.”

“Good night Kevin,” He responds letting his eyes slide shut, the bustle of the camp lingers outside the tent and the sound of life beyond that of the desert is soothing in its own way, rocking him off to sleep.

He wakes an indiscernible amount of time later, not to something apparently life-threatening or a cell phone, and for a minute in the darkness he can’t place why he has waked. Then he hears a sob.

Carlos rolls off the cot and crawls across the tent to Kevin, clumsy in the darkness his hand settles on the curve of Kevin’s jaw and he whispers, “Kevin?”

“There’s so much Carlos,” He mumbles, his voice choked up. Carlos’ other hand strokes down his arm and Kevin curls awkwardly into the contact as he continues breathlessly, “I’ve killed people! So many people. And really, I don’t have anything against the occasional murder if its warranted but so many people for no reason. I – how could I have been that person? I was so against Strex against being controlled and then it all went so terribly wrong.”

“Shhh,” Carlos soothes, pulling Kevin into his arms, rubbing one hand in soothing circles over his arms, “You were forced into it.”

“But I liked it, I participated in it eagerly. I didn’t have to be like that but I chose to be.”

“And you’re choosing to be different now,” Carlos responds and the half asleep and slightly delirious part of his mind finds some humour that not a few months ago he was enacting an eerily similar scene with Cecil.

Kevin doesn’t respond just shakes his head sobbing into Carlos’ lab coat. Again, Carlos feels out of his depth but a scientist is always resourceful and so he continues rubbing soothing circles and starts to hum a half-remembered lullaby from his childhood.

They fall asleep like that and Carlos wakes with a crick in his neck, the first slants of sunlight peeking through the tent, and the tacky taste of a dry mouth. He glances down at Kevin; his face has smoothed out leaving only the tear tracks as evidence of the night before.

He wakes, as if feeling Carlos’ attention, and for a moment he can see embarrassment, guilt, shame, and maybe a whole lot of grief play across his face before he inhales and exhales and says, “I think therapy would be a good investment when we return.”

Carlos huffs a laugh and stretches grabbing the water bottle and taking a sip before passing it to Kevin. He takes a sip, still leaning against Carlos’ chest and after says softly, “Thank you. I’ve done so many horrible things, I didn’t deserve your help.”

“It’s not about deserving, I’m a human being you were suffering so I made the choice to help you.”

“Still thank you,” Kevin says and then leans away before flashing a tentative smile, smaller than the previous ones, and says, “Breakfast?”

“Yeah, I think you’ll like their cacti patties, they’re much better than mine,” Carlos responds helping Kevin to his feet, and just like that it’s easier, maybe not right and he knows it won’t be for a while, but it’s the next step.

As they head towards the centre of camp, Kevin humming under his breath he turns slightly to face Carlos and says, “I think I’d like to return home today Carlos. Would you?”

“Are you ready?”

“Not even close, but I can’t hide away in the desert forever, I need to face my past, face the consequences of my actions before I can move forward with who I am now and who I was, before and after Strex,” Kevin responds and when Carlos turns to face him, he can see the truth of it in his expression.

“We can do today,” Carlos responds, and he feels lighter like he could float, at the sudden prospect of seeing Cecil. He can see Cecil!

They eat breakfast and afterwards go to Doug’s tent, Alicia is there and there are a few tearful farewells, and a part of Carlos suddenly wants to return, maybe with some equipment, the rest of him never wants to see a lighthouse again.

They return to their tent packing up what they want to take back to Night Vale, there’s a giddy sort of silence between the two of them and Carlos knows he’s grinning but he can’t stop. Kevin is pensive, quiet but not like a man walking towards his death so Carlos doesn’t feel too guilty.

As the sun begins to crest towards its zenith, Carlos leads Kevin out into the desert.

He closes his eyes and sees the door in his mind, it sings to him like a siren, like an actual siren whispering of all his greatest ambitions. He wills the door into this reality and he thinks of Night Vale, his Night Vale, with Cecil, old woman Josie, John Peters (you know the farmer), Dana Cardinal as mayor, his lab right next to the Big Rico’s; thinks of _home_.

Kevin makes a small sound and when he opens his eyes, the door is there. It is not the old oak door; the wood of the door is hard to discern but when Carlos reaches out and wraps his hand around the doorknob it feels right. He glances back at Kevin and raises a brow one hand extended. Kevin takes it with a small but sure smile.

Carlos opens the door and holding tight to Kevin’s hands they walk out of the desert otherworld.

And into the radio station.

Cecil looks up from across the room in the broadcast booth and their eyes connect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! The next chapter will be the last chapter, I don't really want to get into all of canon so it'll wrap some aspects of it. Comments are always appreciated, till next time!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone we are here with the final chapter! This one is a bit more like an epilogue but I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you all enjoy!

For a moment, there’s stillness, all Carlos can feel is his heart pounding in his chest and the way he gasps for air. He stares at Cecil, can’t get enough of him, the bags under his eyes, his hair is a bit greasy, he looks tired, but he’s still Cecil and Carlos imagined seeing him again and again but the reality is so much better. Cecil says something about the weather.

Then they’re flying at each other, Cecil’s cane clattering to the ground as he takes a few steps forward and Carlos flies into his arms. Cecil lets out a gasp as Carlos wraps his arms around Cecil as tight as he can manage burying his face in Cecil’s shoulder and inhaling the scent of his body wash and conditioner, the faint and lingering scent of the desert.

Cecil’s hands come up grasping at the back of Carlos’ lab coat as he murmurs, “Carlos, oh Carlos.

“Cecil, querido, I missed you so much,” Carlos responds the words torn from his lips as he tries to meld his body with Cecil’s and scientifically its impossible and most of the time, he’s quite happy having his own separate body but in this moment any space between them feels wrong like it goes against the very laws of nature.

“Carlos,” Cecil says his name, again and again, a litany, a prayer, each time the same soft way that Cecil says his name that seems to trap all of his love into that one word. It makes his name sound like something precious.

There’s a moment where they just breathe in the same shared space of each other, Carlos grounds himself in the rise and fall of Cecil’s chest, the hand smoothing circles into his lab coat, the murmur of his name like a song. Cecil is the first to pull back, and only then to rest his forehead against Carlos’, staring into his eyes and Carlos so suddenly remembers how utterly in love he is.

“Hey,” Carlos says, one hand reaching up to cup Cecil’s jaw. He leans into the contact like an affectionate cat, his eyes falling shut before he blinks them open and smiles adoringly at Carlos.

“You found your way back.”

“I did, I promised,” Carlos responds, shifting slightly to press a chaste kiss to Cecil’s lips. He’s aware of Kevin and perhaps a station intern and yet it all seems to fall away as Cecil melts against him with a soft noise.

Carlos pulls back with a chuckle and Cecil blinks, dazed, one hand reaching up to run his fingers through Carlos’ hair, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too Cecil.”

There’s a bang on the door and they both jump and separate as Carlos glances over his shoulder where the threatening shadow of station management bangs against the door. Laughing, Carlos turns to Cecil and asks, “Did I interrupt your broadcast?”

Cecil pouts and looks like he’s honestly contemplating ditching his broadcast regardless of the (potentially lethal) consequences. He presses a quick kiss to Carlos’ cheek and then straightens turning and carefully walking back into the broadcast booth, bending to pick up his cane as he settles in the chair.

Carlos watches for a moment and knows he’s probably sighing as Cecil says, “Hello listeners I am back, I must apologise for my hasty departure but well you’re never going to believe this listeners. Carlos is back! Yes back. I was sitting here doing the broadcast when a door, not an old oak door I might add, appeared in the radio station and out stepped Carlos, and one of his friends from the desert. He’s still watching me now from outside the booth and listeners I must admit I am very happy and – oh I can see station management waving so now a word from our Community Calendar.”

There’s a shift from behind him and Carlos forcibly turns away from Cecil to catch Kevin awkwardly standing and fidgeting with his hands. He glances up and Carlos smiles apologetically earning a soft shake of Kevin’s head and a small smile. Carlos takes a few steps back to bump his shoulder against Kevin’s and the man blinks, surprised, before he bumps back.

They wait together in silence as Cecil finishes his broadcast, no doubt wrapping it up quicker than he normally would, but still appeasing station management. As the On Air sign flicks off and Cecil stands reaching for his cane the very air seems to be attempting to hold its breath which Carlos has only recorded happening once before.

Cecil steps out of the booth and his eyes lock right onto Carlos and he can tell that Cecil is holding himself back from talking a mile a minute as he checks Carlos over; their usual protocol for life-endangering events. Instead, his eyes stray to Kevin who stares back at him and wow the tension in the room just skyrocketed he could probably measure it. Does this normally happen when Cecil meets one of his parallel selves?

The tension starts to get uncomfortable and even station management is starting to get antsy from behind the door so Carlos claps his hands together and says, “Right introductions. I know you’ve both met before, but uh hopefully we can start things off on the right foot this time. Kevin this is Cecil, my boyfriend, and Cecil this is Kevin, my friend,” he pauses and considers that Cecil hasn’t been updated recently on Kevin’s progress and adds, “Who is recovering from the influence of the Smiling God so be nice.”

For a moment longer, the two stares at each other before Kevin smiles, a very shaky and small smile, and sticks out his hand, “Let me just say I’m awfully sorry for everything that happened. I hope we can start anew.”

Carlos watches as Cecil visibly composes himself, tucking away the kneejerk reactions of anger, fear, grief, and tentatively shakes his hand, “I look forward to it, but also if you ever try to hurt Carlos, I will kill you.”

“Cecil!”

“Oh, I know! Carlos told me that on the first day we met, besides I wouldn’t hurt Carlos not after he’s done so much for me,” Kevin responds cheerily, his gaze darting to Carlos for a moment before his gaze returns to Cecil.

The two stare at each other for a moment longer before Cecil nods and scrubs a hand over his face, “Home?”

“Please,” Carlos begs, reaching out and intertwining his hand with Cecil’s, “I haven’t had a proper shower in months.”

“But look at your highlights dear!” Cecil responds reaching up to run his fingers through Carlos’ hair.

He laughs and then out of the corner of his eyes notices the panicked expression on Kevin’s face and feels a sudden burst of guilt in his chest. Swallowing, he turns to Kevin and offers, “We have a guest room you can use until you’re ready to return to Desert Bluffs, or I have space above my lab if you’d like to be alone?”

“I – uh the guest room please, I don’t think being alone is the best idea right now,” Kevin responds hesitantly.

Carlos just nods with a smile and beckons Kevin to follow them out of the radio station. Cecil is quiet for a moment, glancing every few seconds at Carlos out of the corner of his eyes. Smiling softly and shaking his head Carlos bumps his shoulder against Cecil’s and asks, “What’s for dinner honey? Not stew or anything cactus please.”

“Well then you’re in luck because last week was mandatory stew week,” Cecil jokes with a smile before he says, “I was thinking pizza?”

“Kevin?”

“Sounds great,” Kevin responds and Carlos glances over his shoulder to check on the man who is staring at the radio station with wide eyes. Which, quickly dart around to survey the parking lot and Night Vale itself as they exit the building.

Cecil leads them to the car and something in Carlos’ chest finally settles as he slides into the passenger seat. He’s home, he did it. The radio croons the soft sound of static as the car trundles down the road. Cecil speaks in a soft murmur, recounting the latest news, the laws and regulations that have been passed in his absence and Carlos lets it wash over him familiar and comforting.

They pull into the apartment complex and suddenly it all just slams into Carlos and he sucks in a ragged gasp. Cecil glances at him and he knows Carlos, knows the signs and Einstein Carlos loves him as he passes Kevin the keys and says, “We’re floor 5 number 25, do you mind heading up first? New protocol with the secret police you understand how it is?”

Kevin glances from the keys in Cecil’s hands to Carlos who is struggling for breath, and nods with an easy smile snatching the keys and practically bolting from the car. Cecil immediately leans over the dashboard, ignoring the stick digging into his sides as he cups Carlos’ face and says, “Hey shhh it’s okay, you made it, you’re home with me Carlos.”

“I know I just – just never thought I would see you again,” Carlos gasps back, tangling his fingers around Cecil’s as he sobs. Cecil hums wiping away the tears and begins to count breaths, in, out, in, out, until Carlos isn’t gasping so hard. He leans his head against Cecil’s and smiles, “Thanks.”

“Anything for you love,” Cecil replies rubbing his thumb in soothing motions over Carlos cheekbones, he continues, “Ready?”

“Don’t want to leave Kevin alone for too long?”

“That too,” Cecil replies as he pulls back and steps out of the car. Carlos takes a moment to breathe before he does the same, enjoying the pleasant breeze that sweeps through the air.

Cecil is at his side a moment later as they walk towards the building he asks quietly, “What happened, with Kevin?”

“I gave him the choice,” Carlos pauses considering how to word it before he continues, “He could choose between accepting the Smiling God again, becoming who he was when Strex attacked or he could – he couldn’t be the person he was before Strex, the Kevin you talked to, but he could move past the Smiling God.”

They pause in the hallway outside the apartment, Cecil turns to face him, his expression is full of _wonder_ as he stares at Carlos, “You are absolutely, fantastically, supremely, amazingly-,”

“Neat?”

“Neat,” Cecil agrees, leaning forward to press a kiss to his cheek before he pushes the door to their apartment open. Carlos inhales glancing around the apartment, it’s the same, or mostly the same, a few new trinkets, the chairs are moved, but it’s home.

Kevin is sitting on the couch glancing at one of Carlos’ science textbooks but he glances up at their entrance and plasters a friendly expression on his face, “Nice place you have here.”

Cecil squints at him for a moment, he must see something in Kevin’s face because he nods, “Thanks. What do you want on your pizza?”

Kevin asks if they have copper shavings, Cecil says he’s never tried them and that they only have iron and aluminium if that’s alright? Carlos only distantly processes the conversation, Cecil already knows his order, as he meanders to the bedroom.

He stands there for a long moment, the evening sunlight strong as day where it dapples across his skin. Suddenly his skin itches and he tears off his lab coat and then his shirt and his jeans until he’s standing in his boxers and shivering uncertain.

Cecil comes in a few minutes later and he makes a sound like a whimper before he notices Carlos’ expression and pulls him into an embrace, “Oh Carlos.”

“I’m sorry,” he’s not sure for what, for taking so long, for not being able to bounce back, for bringing Kevin back with him even though it was the right thing to do?

“Nothing to apologise for love, if I wasn’t okay with Kevin, I wouldn’t have sent him up and I know you came back as soon as you could,” then he dramatically sniffs Carlos and says teasingly, “Though you do need a shower.”

“Well, I’m sorry there wasn’t much water in the desert,” Carlos teases turning and folding Cecil into a hug.

They pull apart and Carlos lets Cecil steer him into the shower with a change of clothes. He steps under the hot water and remembers the joys of scented soaps and a loofah.

When he’s finished and doesn’t feel like sandpaper, he steps out into the living room where Cecil is saying, “Currently, the Erikas control Strex if you want to go that route, you’ll have to speak to them, but uh not obviously because they don’t exist. It may be better to try to encourage independent businesses, maybe through a generous donation or the setup or a militarized secret police force.”

Kevin is nodding, which is good, cooperation is good, and Carlos can see that the pizza arrived while he was in the shower. Cecil is the first to notice his entrance and smiles pulling down a few plates and glancing at Kevin for another moment of silent communication that Carlos can’t interpret but he tries not to let it bother him, communication if good!

They eat on the couch, a Night Vale version of The X-Files on the screen which Carlos lost the plot of about two minutes in. The pizza is good, like in the oh my god it’s been months since I’ve had seasoning, good, and Carlos realises his brain is probably flooded with endorphins at this point but he’s also past that point of caring. Instead, he slumps against Cecil and listens as he and Kevin talk about Desert Bluffs and Night Vale (so many similarities, a few key differences, they stretch out in front of him, tempting him, begging him).

Sometime after the sun finally, and sullenly, sinks below the sky Carlos feels Cecil shift and he blinks fuzzily, glancing down the couch at Kevin passed out with his head resting against the arm of the couch, his body curled into a ball. Cecil snorts and says quietly, “Come on time for bed.”

Carlos nods and then just doesn’t move for a minute longer. Cecil nudges him, he hums and sags further against Cecil’s side earning a puff of laughter followed by a shove. He pouts but rises and carefully wakes Kevin who jolts for a moment before blinking blearily at Carlos.

He shows Kevin the guest room and then falls into bed face first. Cecil comes in a moment later and Carlos can hear his soft chuckles as he settles on the edge of the bed reaching out to run his fingers through Carlos’ hair before pulling off his socks and changing into his pyjamas.

Carlos with another round of shoving shuffles beneath the covers curling up in Cecil’s arms. The tears start coming again but this time without the sobbing and Cecil hums wiping away the tears and holding him tight. Carlos falls asleep in Cecil’s arms and for once, his sleep is dreamless.

Things begin to go back to normal, or well as normal as Night Vale ever gets (the answer is Night Vale is normal roughly 12% of the time give or take the position of the moon, your astrological sign, and whether you like apples). Carlos goes to his laboratory the next day, after an extended goodbye, towing Kevin behind him (a temporary arrangement until they figure things out).

A few of his team members are gone and there’s a new face but they greet him enthusiastically, practically dog-piling him, except for the new face who determinedly looks into his microscope. He’s led on a whirlwind tour of new things discovered, anomalies, and the new microwave. After, he empties out his pockets for the sand, rocks, and cacti he collected which the team promptly dives on; anything not to study Night Vale for a bit.

Carlos retreats to his office pulling Kevin, who looks dazed, behind him, and collapses on the futon with a groan. Kevin tentatively asks, “Is it always like this?”

He shakes his head, “Usually a little less frenzied, but well scientists, you know?”

Kevin obviously doesn’t, but he nods his head. Carlos reaches out and flicks the radio on, listening as Cecil’s voice fills the small office. He tips his head back and then after a long moment sits up, “Right, let’s get to work.”

He checks up on the experiments he had been running before everything and explains it to Kevin when he asks. Then he checks up on his team over lunch, explains what happened, he doesn’t mention Huntokar not yet, and makes sure that they’re all okay.

After work, he leads Kevin to old woman Josie. She pulls him into a hug and Carlos sinks into it, she always reminds him of his Abuela. She pulls back and studies Kevin for a long moment before she hums dismissively and welcomes them inside.

Carlos sips iced tea, nibbles on a biscuit, listens to Josie detail the latest gossip, and politely ignores Kevin talking to the Erikas in the next room. As Cecil is finishing up his broadcast, Carlos leads them out to the car, the radio playing the soft sound of dread, and asks, “Good talk?”

Kevin sits on the words for a moment as Carlos pulls onto the road (it’s weird to be driving again), before he finally says, “I think so.”

They go home, eat dinner together, watch tv and talk. They settle into a strange sort of new routine Carlos and Cecil go to work, sometimes Kevin accompanies either of them, sometimes he goes to the Night Vale mental health centre (far better than the hospital but still quite dubious in other ways) or to Josie’s or to Desert Bluffs.

At night the dreams come and the distant shadow of a barking dog grows steadily louder, the door beckons in his mind, offering answers, observations, experiments. Carlos tries to distract himself with science (he has equipment! He may or may not have cried over his microscope at one point), or with Cecil, with Night Vale itself, he tries to ground himself in this reality.

But it doesn’t always work.

He gets home from the laboratory early after a minor explosion meant the lab had to be fumigated again, only the second time this week which was quite the positive sign. Carlos collapses on the couch and the tv flicks on and then he feels it call to him can hear Huntokar whispering his name. Just a peak he tells himself and knows it’s a lie even as he looks beyond the door.

The next thing he’s aware of is someone calling his name and then a splash of cold water running down his spine. Carlos jolts, blinking and trying to clear his vision until it solidifies from blurry into the face of his boyfriend staring at him in concern.

“Carlos?” Cecil says his name like he’s about to fall apart in front of him.

He shifts and slowly reaches up to cup Cecil’s jaw and cracks a smile, it feels as if he hasn’t moved in centuries, “Hey.”

Kevin comes into his field of vision and sighs, “Oh good it worked, sorry you’re wet, again.”

“I – it’s fine,” Carlos reassures still struggling for words. His mouth is dry and tacky and Kevin notices and ducks out of his field of view again.

Then he refocuses on Cecil who is doing that deep inhale because I am very overwhelmed emotionally, thing he does. Carlos waits and watches Cecil, who after Kevin has brought back a bottle of water and Carlos doesn’t quite feel like he’s dying of thirst asks, “What happened?”

Carlos leans back into the couch and asks, “How long?”

“It’s about five now,” Kevin responds.

Carlos nods and turns to face Cecil again, “Sometimes I – when I opened the door, I couldn’t close it. I don’t know how much of this I can explain with you remembering, the last time I tried you forgot.”

“What?” Cecil asks brow furrowing.

“It was a few nights ago,” Carlos shakes his head, “It doesn’t matter, I’ll try to explain it as vaguely as possible. There are multiple realities, right? Scientifically, this is at least theoretically proven. When I opened the door it – I was able to see these other realities. Sometimes I look and I get… lost.”

“Carlos,” Cecil says his name and manages to say so much else all compressed into that one word, “Would you be able to close the door?”

He thinks of Huntokar smiling, her pride, and he knows that door will not be shut, he shakes his head, “No. But I think I’ll be able to use it, something is coming and our reality it’s shaky,” that’s all he can say because if he acknowledges everything else then… he continues, “But I’ll find my way back to you, I always will, I promise.”

Cecil nods and they have a quiet dinner and things go back to a form of normal again but maybe Carlos isn’t left alone as often and he tries not to let it bother him because he understands where Cecil and Kevin are coming from, really.

Two months later, a murder plot revealed and Cecil freed of Lot 37, they say goodbye to Kevin at the border of Night Vale. He smiles and Carlos knows, not in the ways Cecil sometimes does, that Desert Bluffs, that Kevin is going to be okay. It will take time and healing, but he knows they can do it.

They go home and curl together in their bed, shut away from the outside world, the barking has grown louder in his dreams a chasing nothingness, the realities continue to blur and shift at an ever-rapid speed, and all along she watches. But Carlos knows that they can face it all together and so he curls tighter against Cecil’s chest and he sleeps and waits for tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! I had a lot of fun writing this fic and getting into these characters mindsets. Comments are always appreciated, thank you all once again!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I have no idea when the next one is coming out but I do have it and maybe a third chapter roughly planned out. Comments are always super appreciated, thank you for reading!


End file.
